Getty Image / Alika Jenner
Jim Larranaga will coach one of the biggest games of his career this weekend.
On Saturday, his Miami Hurricanes will take on UCONN in the Final Four.
The winner already knows they’ll be taking on a mid-major in the championship game.
Today, Larranaga shared an idea that would get more mid-majors a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament.
Jim Larranaga: “Let’s expand the NCAA Tournament to at least 96 teams.”
— John Fanta (@John_Fanta) March 30, 2023
This definitely isn’t it.
I know that a lot of people are going to throw around ideas to make sure that teams like FAU and San Diego State don’t have to win their conference tournament to get a chance to compete in the NCAA Tournament or get a reasonable seed in the tournament.
This is the wrong way to address that.
This would essentially absorb the NIT into the NCAA Tournament. Every team in the NIT doesn’t deserve a spot in March Madness. I watched enough of teams like Colorado, Florida, UCF, and Michigan this year to know that we didn’t need to see more of them playing on the big stage.
However, there were teams in the NIT that have proven they absolutely deserved a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
UAB and North Texas clearly didn’t get enough credit for playing in a Conference USA that was way better than expected.
Both of those teams suffered losses in tough non-conference games, beat each other, and lost to FAU throughout the year and still ended up with less than 10 losses each.
Even teams like Santa Clara and Liberty saw a decent chunk of their losses during the regular season come against strong opposition.
The answer to making sure deserving teams get in is taking a harder look at teams like this instead of rewarding teams like West Virginia who didn’t win 20 games and finished conference play under .500 or Providence, who couldn’t pick up a good win away from home even though they had a ton of chances.
Larranaga is right that there needs to be a change. This just isn’t the one that needs to be made.